From the article: “On the morning of 9/11, as the world was transfixed by television images of the World Trade Center collapsing into rubble, a handful of Chinese entrepreneurs were busy churning out a product that would be seen everywhere in the United States the following day.

Sensing a business opportunity, they were mass-producing a small American flag that still flutters atop many vehicles today, a symbol of the wave of U.S. patriotism unleashed by the 9/11 attacks. The fact that the flags were manufactured and marketed so swiftly is a testament to our fast globalizing world as well as to the well-known entrepreneurial skills of the Chinese.

As Thailand’s trade representative at the time, Kantathi Suphamongkhon liked to tell his fellow Thais that it could well have been them – and not the Chinese – who might have flooded the U.S. market with cheap American flags.”